Scarlett 'in charge of Iraq dossier'

John Scarlett, chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee, insists he was in sole charge of drawing up the Government's dossier on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.

But that has not stopped a barrage of criticism about the extent of Downing Street's involvement.

Did he allow Number 10 interfere in the content of the document?

Downing Street was involved in the production of the dossier but all sides say that Mr Scarlett had "ownership" of it.

Despite prompts from Number 10 Mr Scarlett says that any changes were "as a result of the exercise of my professional judgement not the intervention of Downing Street".

And there were no rows between the JIC and Alastair Campbell over the drafting process, he says.

Were Number 10 allowed to influence the preparation of the document?

The intelligence agencies were issued with an eleventh-hour appeal for more information because Downing Street wanted the dossier to be strengthened.

An e-mail from the Cabinet Office assessment staff, responsible for drafting the dossier, said: "... but Number 10, through the chairman, want the document to be as strong as possible within the bounds of the available intelligence.

"This is therefore a last call for any items of intelligence that the agencies think can and should be included."

Did he allow Alastair Campbell to manipulate the document?

Mr Campbell, who chaired meetings on September 5 and 9 on the dossier's presentation, asked for

some of the language to be "tightened".

The language used in the 45-minute claim was changed from "may" be deployed to "are" deployable, after Mr Campbell had suggested that "may" was too weak.

But Mr Scarlett says the intelligence assessment staff changed the language to remove inconsistencies between sections of the dossier and not because of Mr Campbell's intervention.

Mr Scarlett considered Mr Campbell's suggestion that the dossier should be "the drier the better" and to "cut the rhetoric" as simply quite useful "presentational advice".

He also helped Mr Campbell to prepare for his June 25 Foreign Affairs Select Committee appearance.

Were the intelligence agencies happy about producing the dossier?

Mr Scarlett said he had been concerned there could be some "slight ambiguity" after the head of the Foreign Office news department John Williams began drawing up a separate draft. This could have caused confusion about who was "controlling this," he told the inquiry.

Producing the dossier had the full support of the intelligence agency chiefs although some concerns were raised among the lower ranks.

"I was aware that, at working level and maybe higher, there were worries in the intelligence community about the precedent that would be set by a document of this kind and of ensuring that in no way did it impinge on operational security and the security of sources," he said.